The Beasts of Brora!
“I noticed on a recent visit to St Andrews that they’ve introduced a flock of sheep, mimicking The Irish Course at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin or Machrihanish Dunes on Scotland’s west coast. Seems like a gimmick to me!”
“Pssst….What’s he looking at?” And what’s with the mint?
Brora's always been the real deal! Crofters have had ‘Common Grazing’ rights on these links for centuries, allowing their fleecy flocks to gamble between golfers and greens. And here at Brora, it all works rather well!
Brora’s golfers have always shared the links with the livestock!
Electric fences keep the animals, both sheep and cows, away from the wonderful, fine-fescue, all-natural putting surfaces. Otherwise, they're free to roam wherever their grazing instincts take them between the outer perimeter fence by the main road, the crofters’ cottages and scimitar beach.
ROYAL MARINE HOTEL
The Royal Marine Hotel in Brora attracts all sorts of old codgers… like me!
I usually stay at the Royal Marine Hotel in Brora and have enjoyed a special relationship with the hotel, club and town thanks in part to Robert & Dawn Powell who ran the Royal Marine at the time and regularly made me welcome. I managed to get a few features and photographs into various golf magazines through the years so it was a sort of symbiotic relationship.
THE BANDIT OF BRORA
“There was one visit, however, when things weren’t quite so amicable.”
I was travelling with three other journalists at the time, two good friends from the USA, Jeff Wallach and Tom Mackin along with Malcolm Campbell, my colleague from Golf Monthly, distinguished writers all of the golf travel genre!
I was regaling the Americans of the joys of Brora as we stepped into the pro shop ahead of their inaugural round only to discover various products for sale, all sporting my photography of the golf course…and completely unbeknownst to me!
I can’t remember the details now but I believe there were coffee mugs, placemats, postcards and posters emblazoned with my images. The pro at the time, a somewhat sheepish fellow made his excuses saying he didn’t realise he wasn’t allowed to use someone else’s images for his own profit! How innocently mendacious! I suppose being so far north of the rest of the world, he thought he would get away with it. My colleagues, scions of the publishing industry, said I should sue his ass but as usual, being such a nice guy, I sheepishly let it go!
COW WITH A BANJO
Standing on the 1st tee at Brora, the phrase ‘you couldn’t hit the arse-end of a cow with a banjo’ somehow springs to mind. The big beasts hang around the 1st, perhaps putting bets on the punters not unlike St Andrew’s caddies.
I've played Brora umpteen times but never hit anything except the middle of the fairway! I wish! There’s plenty of room out there and scant rough to talk of. The animals see to that!
“This is iron play as it was intended by the Creator! ”
The most memorable experience of Brora is nipping the ball off that pure links loam. Brora is simply one of the best examples of the purest of linksland on the planet. The sensational seaside turf is as natural as you will find anywhere in the world and, as Old Tom said on umpteen occasions (referring to umpteen different golf courses) ‘Specially designed by the Almighty for playing golf.’
BRAID’S ‘BRAWEST’
It was the late, great James Braid who etched out this magnificently rustic track and apparently, he didn’t have much to do. The 5-times Open Champion came up from Elie in Fife by train (he wasn’t much of a traveller) and spent an afternoon surveying the existing 9-hole course, selecting a few new tee and green positions to accommodate the nine new holes then hopped back on the next train south. It was January 1923 and he charged the club £25 plus expenses…not a bad day’s work but bear in mind the poor man’s tendency towards travel sickness. He should have stayed a night or two and gone ‘gold-panning’ up the nearby Kildonan Pass which saw Scotland’s one and only gold rush. An article on that to follow here...
Don’t get the impression Braid was a ‘flash-in-the-pan’ golf course architect. Despite only visiting the town twice in the mid 1920s, the 5-times Open Championship winner’s career is celebrated here in Brora in the ‘James Braid Lounge’.
I was glancingly associated with the ‘James Braid Golfing Society’ at its inception in the early ‘90s. My above-mentioned golf travel-writing compatriot, Malcolm Campbell led the way with that idea and invited me to join the society but I was too much on the move to be much of a meaningful member even though they encouraged the wearing ‘tweed bunnets’ à la Monsieur Braid and his ilk.
The Society still exists and is still headquartered here in Brora. During his architectural career, Braid was responsible for the design of over 250 courses throughout the UK with at least 100 in his native Scotland. In the Highlands, he carved out Boat of Garten, Inverness, Muir of Ord, Fortrose & Rosemarkie, Golspie, Brora and Reay. That must have entailed a lot of train travel. They celebrate his endurance as the ‘James Braid Highland Golf Trail’, another early article of mine that got ‘filched’! But not to worry; such is the life of a creative genius!
Getting back to playing the golf course, Brora is not long as confirmed by the 6200 yards on the card. Nor is it complicated like nearby Golspie which sports three entirely different sections or indeed Royal Dornoch which, to my mind is one of the most convoluted golf conundrums on the planet. Brora is plain sailing across a sea of gently billowing seaside links. But, for some reason, it’s perennially popular. I’m sure it’s the quality of the turf that makes it so appealing! My golfing buddy, Jeff Wallach played 56 holes the next day of our visit starting before the rest of us hit breakfast and finishing in time for dinner, exhausted but exhilarated! He’s an addict that way! But as I recall, conditions were benign which is not typical in this northeast corner. Given a bit of wind, Brora presents a whole other set of challenging circumstances.
Clynelish Distillery in Brora is one of the pillars of the Johnnie Walker whisky operation.
Picturesque Brora Harbour was built in 1813-14 to import raw materials and export emigrants forced to leave for Canada and New Zealand.
